Why is my bitcoin pending in Ledger Wallet?

What pending means in Ledger Wallet

Ledger Wallet, the app Ledger used to call Ledger Live, shows a bitcoin payment you’ve sent greyed out with the Sending status until it confirms, and its details say Not confirmed. That means your Ledger device signed it, the payment went to the Bitcoin network, and it is waiting in the queue for a miner to put it in a block. Ledger doesn’t hold your bitcoin, as an exchange would: it describes Ledger Wallet as self-custody, so there is no hold or review by Ledger. A payment waits longer when its fee is lower than what others are paying at the time.

Find the transaction ID and look it up

In Ledger Wallet on a computer, scroll down the Portfolio to Latest operations and click the payment. Its Operation details show the Transaction ID, with a View in explorer link. Paste the ID into UTXOHub’s search. The payment’s page says whether it is waiting or confirmed and, if it is waiting, roughly when it will probably confirm and what speeding it up would cost right now.

• A Bitcoin transaction ID has 64 characters, digits and the letters a to f. Copy it whole rather than retyping it.
• Ledger Wallet labels fees in sats/byte, but Ledger says that for SegWit accounts the fee is really worked out in sats per virtual byte (sat/vB), the unit UTXOHub shows.
• Each confirmation makes a payment harder to reverse. Whoever receives it decides how many to wait for.

Speed up a bitcoin payment you sent

Ledger’s guide says to click the pending payment, then Speed up or Cancel, choose Speed up and Continue, check the details, and confirm on your Ledger device with the Bitcoin app open. Ledger Wallet chooses the new fee itself, 10% above the original’s, and sends a new version of the payment that replaces the old one. This is called replace-by-fee. The new version has a new transaction ID, so look that one up afterwards.

• Only the most recent payment you created can be sped up. If several are waiting, Ledger says only the latest one can.
• You need enough bitcoin left in the account to pay the extra fee.
• If the payment confirms while you are speeding it up, the speed-up can’t finish, and the payment is already in a block.
• Ledger also explains raising the fee with Electrum 4.8.3 or newer and your Ledger: right-click the payment and choose Increase fee. For some account types, it suggests Sparrow Wallet instead.

Cancel a bitcoin payment before it confirms

The same Speed up or Cancel link has a Cancel option. Ledger says it sends 0 BTC to your own address, with a fee 10% higher than the original’s. In practice the replacement spends the same bitcoin back to your own account, so you keep it, less the higher fee. It works only while the payment is waiting: if the original confirms first, it stands, and nothing can reverse it. Ledger says Cancel is greyed out when the account can’t cover the fee, or when the bitcoin the payment uses has already been spent.

If Ledger Wallet won’t send the payment

Some payments never reach the network, so there is nothing to look up. If sending stops at the Device step with a loading wheel that never stops, Ledger says the account holds too many separate amounts of bitcoin, called UTXOs, for the device to read. It mostly happens to miners paid straight into a Ledger. Ledger suggests sending a smaller amount, or using coin control to pick one or two of them. If you see the error txn-mempool-conflict, Ledger says the payment conflicts with one already waiting. It suggests clearing the cache and trying again, or using Electrum.

• If a bitcoin payment fails, Ledger suggests choosing a Medium or High fee instead of Low.
• After a txn-mempool-conflict error, look up your last payment first. If it is still waiting, the bitcoin is already on its way.

If bitcoin sent to your Ledger isn’t showing

Ask the sender for the transaction ID and look it up. If it is still waiting, there is nothing wrong with your Ledger: it needs a block. If it has confirmed and paid your address but Ledger Wallet’s balance or history is wrong, Ledger says clearing the cache fixes it: open Settings, then the Help tab, then Clear cache, and wait for the app to sync again.

• You can speed up a payment to you from your side, by spending it on with a higher fee. This is called child pays for parent. Ledger’s pages don’t describe it in Ledger Wallet, but Electrum, which works with a Ledger, offers Child pays for parent on the payment’s right-click menu.
• If an exchange sent it, our guides for Coinbase, Kraken and Binance say when each one sends a withdrawal and where it shows the transaction ID.

Fake Ledger support

Ledger says it will never ask for the 24 words of your recovery phrase, and that any message asking for them, even one that looks like it came from Ledger, is a phishing attempt. Speeding up or cancelling a payment never needs them: you confirm it on your Ledger device. Never type your recovery phrase into a website, or give it to anyone who offers help.